Summary
Iraqi government troops and Kurdish fighters launched their push towards Mosul in the early hours of Monday. Mosul is second-largest city of Iraq.
Kurdish tank units advanced from the east and they are within 300m of IS positions. The Kurds seized several villages in the first few hours of the operation.
Iraqi government troops and Kurdish fighters are operating from Qayyarah airbase, which was recaptured in August. The main assault is being led by Iraqi army troops. Elite Iraqi counterterrorism forces are expected to join in the coming days.
IS militants overran there because its capture became a symbol of the group’s rise as a major force and its ability to control territory.
Even if IS is driven out of Mosul, the group will still control areas of northern and eastern Iraq.
Opinion
In Japan, the sectarian disputes seldom happen. Japanese believe in the many kinds of religions:Buddhism, Christianity Shintoism. Almost Japanese don’t persist in specific religion. However, they often go to a shrine to pray for happy, health and success. It becomes their tradition. The religion exists as one of the customs of their life in Japan.
Such as Japanese’s thinking against religion shows that Japanese have a great acceptability. In Edo Period, when Japan was needed to open a country, Japanese cultures and skills could not develop exponentially without their acceptability. At that time, quite a lot of information was flew in Japan. They had a very hard time to assimilate the cultures of foreign countries. However, they had the acceptability, they could flexibly respond to changes or expansion.
Persisting in something is good but attitude of permissiveness like this is also important.